DOI: 10.11649/ch.2014.014 Colloquia Humanistica 3 (2014) Multiple Biographies, Transcultural Experience Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA Tomasz Rawski Katarzyna Roman Institute of Sociology, Institute of Russian Studies, University of Warsaw University of Warsaw How to Escape? The Trap of the Transition in the Recent Cinema of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000-2012) Abstract The paper concerns the latest cinema of Bosnia and Herzegovina (2000-2012). Focusing on the cinema of social criticism (represented by movies which try to rethink the new socio-political order gradually emerging in BiH after the war of 1992-95), the authors recognize the Bosnian society as a community captured in the trap of an unfinished system transition. The story of the Bosnian society, simultaneously stuck in a dysfunctional and oppressive state and completely devoid of any prospects for the improvement of this situation, seems to be dominated by several escape strategies into an alternative reality: the nostalgic past, the imagined present or the utopian future. In that sense, the Bosnian cinema of social criticism turns out to be a cinema of social escapism. Key words: Bosnia and Herzegovina; Bosnian cinema; social escapism; post- war society Introduction t is not easy to talk about the present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina I(below abbr. as: BiH) without the war in the background. Film artists continuously face the trauma of the first half of the 1990s and continue This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 PL License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/), which permits redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, provided that the article is properly cited. © The Author(s), 2014 Publisher: Institute of Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences Editor in chief: Jolanta Sujecka Conception and academic editing of this issue: Maciej Falski Tomasz Rawski , Katarzyna Roman to enrich the war film genre with more pictures1. This subject certainly deserves a detailed study, the more so because the post-war Bosnian- Herzegovinian cinema (below abbr. as: bh. cinema2) has not actually had a critical reception (Ibrahimović 2008: 125). However, almost twenty years after signing the Dayton Peace Agreement, post-war BiH is still undergoing a long economic, social and political transformation that does not seem to be coming to an end in the near future. A closer look at the social reality of contemporary BiH is then particularly worth taking, the more so because social criticism seems to be the second most important issue in the bh. cinema. The filmmakers seem to make socially engaged films as often as they do war films. In this paper, we focus on the recent bh. cinema from the years 2000– 2012. One of the reasons is that, according to the film critics from the region, bh. cinema was literally dead until 2001 (Pavičić 2008: 651). We discuss films that make attempts to interpret the new social order, slowly emerging from the war storm. Therefore, we are less interested in film texts with the war in the foreground, nor are we interested in the ones where the main characters are still engrossed in the consequences of the war3. First of all, we take into account films that problematize the Bosnian “here and now”, as well as those images in which the trauma of war affects the present life to a limited extent. We take a closer look at those films which, in our opinion, give the best account of the condition of contemporary BiH society. When we speak of bh. cinema, we should keep in mind its internal divi- sion, one of the consequences of the administrative split of contemporary BiH4. In practice, this means that bh. cinema is dominated by Bosnian Muslims, since Bosnian Serbs practically do not make films5. Furthermore, bh. cinema is largely a Sarajevian cinema – the vast majority of the films take 1 The genre widely represented by such films as the famous No man’s land (2001) directed by Danis Tanović, but also Remake (2003) by Dino Mustafić,Go West (2005) by Ahmed Imamović, Nafaka (2006) by Jasmin Duraković and others. 2 Bh. cinema and bh. film are the abbreviations often used by film critics from the region, such as Nedžad Ibrahimović and Jurica Pavičić. 3 So those movies in which the characters focus, above all, on searching for their deceased be- loved ones (as in Belvedere (2010) by Ahmed Imamović), struggling for their decent burial (as in Halimin put (2012) directed by a Croat, Arsen A. Ostojić) or looking for lost biological parents (as in Ostavljeni (2010) by Adis Bakra). 4 Contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina, by virtue of the Dayton Peace Agreement, is a federa- tion of two, largely autonomous entities: The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with a Mu- slim-Croat majority, and Republika Srpska, with a Serb majority. 5 If Republika Srpska participates in the production of big-screen feature films, it is usually the second or subsequent producer, generally in co-production with Serbia (Turneja (2008) by Goran Marković, the Serbian director, can be a good example here); however, some Serbian ac- tors, such as Dragan Bjelogrlić, usually take roles in the Federation films. 194 COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA HOW TO ESCAPE? THE TRAP OF THE TRANSITION place in the official capital of the country. The Bosnian province remains undervalued. The recent bh. cinema tries to fill up the cultural void that emerged after the collapse of the relatively coherent Yugoslav symbolic universe, followed by the devastating civil war. According to Nedžad Ibrahimović, contemporary Bosnian artists feel deracinated – on the one hand not belonging to any film tradition, and unable to begin a new, relatively autonomous paradigm, on the other, under constant economic pressure and the necessity to reach a compromise between the desire to realize one’s own artistic aspirations and the need to create such a film interpretation of the contemporary reality which would meet broad social expectations (Ibrahimović 2008: 117). One of the characteristic features of the recent bh. cinema of social criticism seems to be a clear dichotomy between extremely serious social drama kept in a raw realistic convention and derisive popular comedy sliding into complete nonsense. Regardless of the consensus with popular cinema, all the discussed films are permeated by an uncompromising social criticism6. Bosnia and Herzegovina is a dying country In the Bosnian vision of disordered transition, one of the least useful actors is the political elite. Above all, filmmakers criticize their hardly noticeable impact on improving the social situation, total passivity in the decision-making process and lack of any strategy of state management. In the eyes of Pjer Žalica, director of Gori vatra (Fuse, 2003), the government appears to be a comic puppet theatre, blindly subordinated to the patterns of Western democracy. According to the author, the most absurd situation takes place when the Bosnian authorities voluntarily waive all their competencies in exchange for a vague promise of immediate improvement. In Gori Vatra, representatives of the state administration, naively believing in the redemptive power of the planned visit of the President of the United States, passively submit to the decisions of the U.S. delegation, who degrade them to the role of cultural animators. The final failure of the entire project, interrupted by the suicide of the former police chief, reveals that the inert local authorities are not able to see the real social problems. 6 The general remark worth noticing here, is that one of the greatest achievements in the his- tory of Yugoslav cinema is strictly connected to social criticism – the films of crni talas, crni val (Eng. black wave) from the 60s and the early 70s revealed the dark sides of Yugoslav socialism, which were ignored by the official ideology; however, it is hard to draw an aesthetic parallel between crni talas and the recent bh. cinema. COLLOQUIA HUMANISTICA 195 Tomasz Rawski , Katarzyna Roman Žalica is one of the many who bring accusations also against the international community, which is keeping the new Bosnian order in custody. The topos of Western soldier willingly using the services of brothels is often present in the latest bh. cinema and draws attention to their dubious contribution to restoring a stable, conflict-free everyday life. In the eyes of the artists, BiH seems to be an exploited plaything in the hands of the West, which gives permission for the undisturbed local increase in crime. Another aspect of the broad interrelationship between the local authorities and the criminal world got its fuller realization in Srđan Vuletić’s Summer in the Golden Valley (2003). The director, telling the story of Ramiz who, working as a police officer is simultaneously involved in the criminal world of Sarajevo, exposes the hypocrisy of the government authorities. Paradoxically, the police seem to be the main threat to citizens, instead of protecting them. Vuletić offers an uncompromising criticism of cynical government policy which accepts the situation when a criminal acts as the main guardian of public order. In the eyes of the society, the state is completely disgraced – when on the flagpole, instead of the blue-and-yellow BiH state flag, a pair of old, worn-out pants are seen flapping about. The state symbols are also taunted by other artists – the main character of Faruk Sokolović’s Mliječni put (The Milky Way, 2000) speaks his mind about the national anthem of BiH. He considers the attempts of his daughter, trying to learn to play the anthem, useless – after all, the anthems change every now and then. The thoughtlessness and social insensitivity of the authorities are exposed by Jasmila Žbanić in Grbavica (Grbavica: the land of my dreams, 2006).